By Ann Roosevelt
General Dynamics‘ [GD] C4 Systems today opens its sixth and largest EDGE facility, the Vehicle C4ISR Innovation Center, in Taunton, Mass., to bring government opportunities to pick and choose a solution best suited to its needs.
“We are about improving the complete user experience inside the vehicle,” Mike Polaneczky, senior C4ISR Systems Architect with General Dynamics C4 Systems, said in an interview with Defense Daily. “It’s not about a radio, it’s not about an intercom, it’s not about a computer. It’s about how all of those things work together to give a complete beneficial user experience to the occupants of vehicle.”
The Vehicle C4ISR Innovation Center kicked off in the third quarter of 2008 and is fully up and running as ceremonies mark a move into a larger facility.
The EDGE Innovation Network is a collaborative effort of members from industry and academia with government input to work together to move new technologies and innovative capabilities to warfighters faster.
The vehicle occupant’s job is not important, be they gunner, commander, driver or dismounted infantry, Polaneczky said. It all depends on understanding that the user experience within the vehicle depends on the mission, and that means the Vehicle C4ISR Innovation Center focuses as well on the mission.
The inspiration for the center came from General Dynamics’ experience as the host of EDGE Innovation Networks, he said. The first one, for the Warrior, in Scottsdale Ariz., had successes with the dismounted infantry soldier, particularly with General Dynamics’ Land Warrior equipment. Using the EDGE process, the 90 or so members of the network worked to bring customers in to see different solutions to choose what they wanted and promote rapid fielding.
That center was successful enough that it was believed the same level of innovation could occur for soldiers and a vehicle, Polaneczky said. The process tries to “harmoniously” incorporate soldiers and their equipment into the vehicle and the equipment that interacts with both the soldier and the vehicle itself.
This must encompass ways to minimize weight, power and space needs, doing it safely, comfortably and conveniently and making access and movement to all the equipment in the vehicle work as easily as possible with the occupants.
As an example, in a commercial context a vehicle’s driver or passenger is not very concerned with who makes the radio, back up camera or GPS system–they expect them all to work well together.
“That’s the analogy. We just want everything to work well together and the human being is at the center of that,” he said.
The Vehicle C4ISR Innovation Center has a laboratory of roughly 7,000 square feet, a bench top systems integration lab where EDGE Innovation partners would work, lab spaces for both high and low fidelity mockups of vehicle interiors. Here real users can be recorded as they interact with proposed solutions. There are also fabrication and assembly areas where solutions are physically integrated, and a vehicle high bay, where integrating and testing of equipment and solutions are conducted. The center also has office space and meeting rooms, as well as areas for EDGE Innovation Network members to work in privacy with special access.
The expected outcome is both “sooner and better thought out” solutions, Polaneczky said.
“We invest time upfront making sure that we’re going after the right problem,” he said. That is done by paying close attention to what the government says are its priorities now and in the future.
There is also a Knowledge Management System that certain EDGE Innovation Network members can access, he said. It is a database that is easy to identify where various members technologies align with user needs the center is hearing from users.
Another part of the equation is combat veterans. “Two in particular that we have been working with have volunteered their personal time, they’re right out of Iraq, right out of Afghanistan,” he said. These soldiers have been interviewed as to what a day in their life is like, some of their major problems, and then, based on that, a notional solution is created. Soldiers then kit up in all their gear and get in a vehicle with a low fidelity mockup of potential solutions. They “use” the solution and give verbal feedback about their experience. That information is incorporated to come up with a solution that solves the problem.
Taunton-area EDGE Innovation Network members include BBN Technologies, Charles River Analytics and Draper Laboratories.
The EDGE innovation network has grown to 89 active members since its original 15 in 2006. There are now centers in the United States and Britain:Warrior EDGE Innovation Center- -Scottsdale, Ariz.; EDGE United Kingdom–Oakdale, U.K.; Federal Civil Technologies EDGE Innovation Center–Scottsdale, Ariz.; Testing and Training Technologies EDGE Innovation Center–Orlando, Fla.; and the Leavenworth EDGE Innovation Center–Leavenworth, Kan.
Other EDGE contributors include General Dynamics C4 Systems’ Computing Technology, Communication Networks and General Dynamics Canada. These business areas contributed innovation ideas prevalent in key military programs including Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) and the Common Hardware Systems- 3 (CHS-3) contract.